Frankly, the answer is "no." Paul Ryan does stand for a balanced budget reached in what some people would regard as draconian ways, including Medicare curtailments.
That could endear him to some who are worried about United States eventually turning into Spain or Italy or even Greece.
But I don't think it means much at all to everyday Americans who care about economics only when it comes to putting food on the table. Ryan's budget and Medicare issues seem too ethereal for most to follow.
I am always willing to find the financial angle to the political, but this choice is about the theoretical nature of our budget deficit and, rightly or wrongly, the people do not seem to care about the skyrocketing deficit and how to rein it in.
What I do find disturbing about not just Romney-Ryan (or Rom Ryan's Express, as I like to call it, to highlight one of Frank Sinatra's best movies) but also Obama-Biden is the lack of focus on growth as a way to help reduce the budget deficit.
Sure, perhaps we can cut our way to lower deficits and Romney Ryan will keep dividend and capital gains tax rates low. That doesn't change with this pick. We can raise the rates on taxes for some individuals to solve a small amount of our deficit, not much more than that, which is the Obama plan.
But what we really need is healthy economic growth and we don't have it. I don't see meaningful suggestions under either candidate's plans to date to change that.For example, just last week we had Harold Hamm, the visionary CEO of Continental Resources, on CNBC's "Mad Money." He also advises Romney on energy issues and he made it clear that Romney does not favor the natural-gas act propounded by Boone Pickens to increase the use of natural gas to spur growth, smash OPEC, and give us energy security with cleaner skies.
That's the kind of plan that would spur hundreds of thousands of jobs as we would have to lay pipeline all over the country, build new gas stations for compressed natural gas and cause more drilling to meet the natural gas demand from surface vehicles.
Pickens has made it clear that the act pays for itself, but it amounts to the government choosing an industry to support and that's something that Romney has said will not happen under his administration, in order to avoid the solar fiasco that's been ongoing under the Obama administration.
Nor does either candidate endorse the idea of a massive refinancing of U.S. debt by taking advantage of the low long-term bond rates to issue trillions in debt, of which there remains tremendous private sector demand. That way we have some short-term breathing room as we focus on the long-term concerns that Paul Ryan has tried hard to address.
Bigger tax revenues from growth initiatives like the natural-gas act. A Treasury plan to capitalize on our low interest rates. These are meaningful suggestions for right now.
As controversial as the selection of the radical budget cutter Paul Ryan, I am calling it a non-event for your portfolio as it changes nothing for the outlook and earnings of stocks, which in the end control how much you will make by investing in terrific stocks for the future.
Disclosures: Cramer's charitable trust has no positions in the stocks mentioned.
